Lady Victoria Campbell

38 FROM DEATH UNTO LIFE
the publisher, who was often present, and to the
edification of all who heard the choice language of
the critic and corrector.
Naturally, she felt that her pupils were lost in the
swamps of unfathomable ignorance ! She herself
wrote a beautiful, " correct " handwriting. Two of
her pupils at least wrote in a hand which she charac-
terised " as not becoming in a grocer's boy." Long
years after, one of the said pupils heard her taking
modest credit for the excellence of the same writing
which had met with her just criticism. That pupil
she had destined for a farmer's wife. " F. can never
be kept out of the company of the stables and byre."
When another fate overtook the most unlearned and
troublesome of her scholars, and she was the welcome
guest in a home not altogether uncultured, again she
ventured to remind those she found there " that
dear F. had been a pupil of her own."
Hers was the student life, and that her lore was kept
from the dryasdust type was largely due to the
world of youth under her gentle sway, and held to her
by a very human sympathy. " She had been young,"
and her youth was marred by disappointments in
health and hopes. Best of all, she had a saving and
rich sense of humour, and a temperament naturally
inclined to the morbid was redeemed by a keen
appreciation of the fun which was to be found in
conditions most unpromising for that element. She
and her pupils relieved many a trying situation by
convulsions of ill-concealed mirth.
Lady Victoria had few opportunities of direct